Our luck continues--knock, knock. This morning we visited tourist information to find out about taking a ferry to see the Stockholm Archipelago. We learned about a ferry leaving for the island of Grinda in 45 minutes so we hurried to our hotel, bundled up, and walked to the ferry with 11 minutes to spare.
There are about 30,000 island/rocks out into the Baltic Sea. We had a lovely 2-hour ride among the forested islands of all sizes (and I only nodded off 2 or 3 times). Many islands have buildings, many of hem summer homes. We didn't know much about our destination, Grinda, but it turned out to be perfect.
Welcome to Grinda.
Grinda is owned by an archipelago preservation organization (something like that--reminded us of the Nature Conservancy) and it has a farm, cabins to rent, a hotel, and other amenities. But it also has a beautiful nature trail that goes through coniferous and deciduous forests, meadows, rocky outcroppings, and even the shoreline. Sometimes it felt like we were in the Sierras, with slightly different trees. For such a small island, this 3-kilometer diverse trail was a wonder. We hiked all around, then stopped at the general store for some goodies, ate our sandwiches scrounged from the hotel breakfast, and relaxed and enjoyed the crisp windy sunny day until the ferry returned. I ignored my first impulse to find wifi or read an ebook and instead just slowed down and did nothing. I think I'm finally getting into this vacation stuff.
Lovely hike. Just what we needed after so much city time.
After 2 more hours of ferry (and another short nap or two) we had an important chore--to find out if our new scheme to go north would work. We're getting really good at going to the rail office and this time we did it perfectly except that we were at the metro office instead of the train. But the nice lady sent us to the correct place and we got our tickets, along with a 3-person sleeper (we're going to make a new friend!) for a 22-hour trip tomorrow night to the farthest north place we could go on our Eurail pass: Narvik, Norway. Look it up. It's 140 miles above the Arctic Circle located on the shores of a fjord and in Sami (Lapland) country. A real adventure!
When we got back (after a nice Indian dinner) I started working on the next phase of our trip, which turned into an wonderfully convoluted combination of bus and train trips (Narvik to Bodø to Trondheim to Oslo...) with pretty much constant travel for a week. Dale finally suggested we just come back the same way we went, to Stockholm and then Oslo, and I had to admit that simplified our life quite a bit. So it looks like a plan. But we still have some days before we have to get the tickets so stay tuned.
At the farm on Grinda.
Learning the fine art of relaxing.
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